Jim Sistek is in the middle of his presentation on Global Product Development at Visteon, a global automotive supplier which was a spin-off of Ford Components in 2000. Their product portfolio consists of climate controls, interiors and electronics.

Globalization is taking hold and changes the thinking of manufacturers. This is really not a new concept to the majority of attendees in the room. The fact is, our customer's customers expect them to be global.

Brazil, India, Russia and China are the emerging nations identified by Visteon and the automotive industry. Like some of us who are hyper-connected, Visteon recognizes the hyper-competition in these countries. Why are these emerging markets so important for Visteon? Opportunity. In India, only 7 out of every 1000 people own a car. And the real game changer is the low cost car.

Jim goes on to make a point about the drive for personalization - uniqueness in the countries - that people want what they want, when they want it. In order for Visteon to be a player in these markets, they need to get at least 50%cost reductionout of their products without the reduction in IT infrastructure to compete. And they have used Siemens PLM Software to capitalize on this opportunity.

From concept to "they're out there", Visteon strategy was to implement Teamcenter as a single global system in approximately two years.

70,000 Parts

700,000 Drawings

Process 2,000 changes/month

6 months front end development

6 months to deploy

12 months of enhancements

"I am pleased to say we no longer use spreadsheets!"

Jim's talk continues with a discussion on Supplier Management, hopefully you are catching it on the live stream!

Thanks all for the excellent coverage of this event . I am sure this blog will be followed by many who could not make it to the event this year - how are we promoting the blog to make sure our customers know it is there?

That’s the goal. We sent out a bunch of announcements to the PLM world mailing lists and have been doing promotion and cross linking here. Feel free to tell anyone that you might know that would be interested. It’s mostly word of mouth at this point.

Globalization is the key for corporates specially in countries like India and China. Their economies are now growing even faster than those of the US and the European nations. It is only natural for them to go global.